Snowbrush

I was leaving the library when I saw her; I did a u-turn. She wore a short skirt with long stockings that had black and white horizontal str...

At Belief-o-Matic, you answer 20 questions and get a list of how closely your beliefs align with those of 27 religions and denominations. It...

I’ve been seeing Mark (my orthopedist—that’s him in the photo) every six weeks since my surgery in March, and I always take a written update...

When I was a Mississippi teacher in a school that was half black and half white, nearly all of my black students and half of my white studen...

I attended church for the last two Sundays after an absence of several months. Most churches don’t have much in the way of Sunday school dur...

I just heard a poet on the radio read a loving poem about his dead mother, and I wished I could write a loving poem about my dead mother. Wh...

(May my readers in other countries pardon my use of the word "we." It just seemed too weird to write "the United States"...

First Thing I saw an abandoned rubber tree by a curb a few days ago. It was big, ungainly, and in a broken plastic pot. I didn’t want it, bu...

When Sarah Palin spoke of her affinity for the “Joe Six-packs of America,” I envisioned the millions of people who believe that an opinion e...

At night. Late. Quiet. Alone. In bed. I ponder the daylight world of color, shadow, music, plants, people. They don’t seem real in the darkn...

Peggy holds the most respected job in America, and I the most despised. Registered nurses outrank doctors and professors. Househusbands fall...

Yesterday was a good day for a scrounger. First, I ate a piece of toast that someone had left in a restaurant (I dunked it in my coffee); th...

A woman was sobbing loudly and screaming at invisible people in front of the library today. I had been out all morning and was looking forwa...

Here’s how I see chronic pain. Let’s say you take it into you head to help the poorest people on earth, and you are sent to a city dump in C...

“Nothing lasts; therefore nothing means anything.” I found this sentiment in the blog of a sixteen year old. I couldn’t have written it when...

A letter by a follower from Slidell, Louisiana, reminded me of the following true story. In 1983, I got a pilot’s license and bought an airp...

I attended a Zen service Sunday. The temple is nearby, and I had long been curious about it though discouraged by the requirement that new p...